Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 104, No. 4, August 22, 1936

“Buck Ruxton, you have been convicted on evidence which can leave no doubt in the minds of anyone. The law knows but one sentence for the terrible crime which you have committed. The sentence of this court upon you is that you be taken from this place to a lawful prison and thence to a place of execution, and shall there be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and that your body be afterwards buried within the precincts of the prison, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.”

Dr. Ruxton looked at the pronouncer of his doom, then raised his hand with the palm outward as though in salute, and stepped down from the dock.

Back in Strangeways Prison, Manchester, he busied himself about his appeal. He was sure that he could argue himself out of the noose on the point of the clean car and other items of defense. But when the Court of Criminal Appeal heard his case on April 27, the appeal was dismissed.

And once more Dr. Ruxton, his name inscribed on the roll of infamous medicos, was taken back to his prison there to await the doom which comes one morning on the stroke of eight to those deluded mortals who plan the perfect crime.

Tag Trail by Charles Molyneux Brown

Murder and getaway were perfect — all that was left for the cops was a manila merchandising tag.

I

When Detective Walter Hewitt, alone in a department car, wheeled slowly past Konger Food Store No. 47 everything appeared serene there, a quarter hour before the ten o’clock Saturday night closing hour.

There was an armored motor truck double parked before the store and he had glimpsed the uniformed driver inside, signing for the daily cash receipts he was picking up. He knew that another armed and capable guard watched from within the tank, and on the surface of things, there was nothing to worry about here.

Hewitt hadn’t driven the entire length of the long block beyond, however, when the quiet night air of this suburban community was violently shattered by a series of explosions too sharp for backfires.

Jamming on brakes, he snapped his head about for a backward glance.

Flashes of dull orange winked on the sidewalk before the food store. He could see crouching figures about the armored truck, firing at the uniformed driver, lurching in the store doorway and returning the fire.

Swearing savagely, Hewitt jerked the department flivver about in a U-turn and sped back down the block.

Foolishly, perhaps, he switched on the red center headlight and started the siren blaring, and that warned the stickup mob pulling the bold coup of his presence in the vicinity and determination to interfere.

He saw the uniformed driver slump to the sidewalk; saw a man leap to the cab of the armored truck. Two other scampering figures piled into a small sedan parked at the curb at the rear of the truck.

Then, when the scudding police flivver was only thirty yards from the spot, and Hewitt, with plucked service revolver in his hand, was grimly ready to jam on brakes abreast of the truck, they pulled another smart trick.

The heavy truck with its steel armored tank lunged out from the curb directly in his path, practically blocking the street.

Quick work with brake and steering wheel helped a lot, but there was a sickening, crunching bang when the right wheel and fender of the sluing flivver plowed into the side of the steel monster.

The shock threw Hewitt against the steering wheel with rib-bruising force, jarring the breath from his lungs. His head banged a door corner smartly, laying open a cut over his left eye and all but sending his senses reeling.

The truck rocked but didn’t overturn. The flivver sagged crazily as the right front wheel collapsed.

The truck wallowed away as Hewitt fought for breath and a grasp on spinning senses. The sedan scooted out in the wake of the truck, and a man leaning from a door window emptied an automatic at the police flivver in a roll of searing shots.

Slugs crashed through a windshield already splintered by the collision, and thudded into the seat back. Luckily for Hewitt, he presented a poor target, wedged between wheel and door as he was.

Men came running from the sidewalk. One of them yanked open the left front door of the flivver and Hewitt spilled out. A man steadied him, burbling anxious questions at the sight of that streaming cut over Hewitt’s eye.

Hewitt’s lungs were working again, and he wasted some of his first hard drawn breath swearing. He shook off friendly helping hands and loped, lurching a little, for the store and a telephone.

One glance at the pain-contorted, gray face of the uniformed figure sprawled on the sidewalk before the store doors told a plain story. Blood welled from the unfortunate driver’s forehead and his chest. Fingers still gripped the butt of his revolver.

A stocky, elderly man blocked Hewitt at the doorway.